


You're My Present This Year

by downjune



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Christmas Party, F/M, Family Dynamics, Semi-Public Sex, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-19 00:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13111767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune
Summary: What would he do with the right words if he had them? Speak them? To who? The less spoken about this, the better.





	You're My Present This Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).



> Happy Hockey Holidays, theladyscribe!
> 
> Title is, of course, from That Commercial.

 

Sid “surprised” his family every Christmas Eve, flying in early and having breakfast ready when they got up, his gifts under the tree with the rest in preparation for tomorrow. They played along, still, his mom coming down the stairs and making that happy noise of shock seeing him in the kitchen. His dad hugged him the same way each year—his big, Christmas hug with a “Welcome home, son” and a hard back-slap or two.

Taylor used to beat them both with a running start and high-pitched squeal. The last few years, she’d been up waiting for him, the coffee made. The last few years she’d been…

She hooked two fingers in his belt loop and tugged from where she sat on the kitchen counter—where she waited for him this morning—and spread her knees to fit him.

“Welcome home, Squid,” she said like always. 

“Hey, Kid,” he answered. _Squid and the Kid_. She’d thought it was hilarious since she was eight, wanting to share in the nickname the rest of the world had given him. One connection they had across months and months of absence and thousands of miles.

The knuckles of her first two fingers pressing against his hip, she didn’t quite look up at him, gaze stuck on his chest.

Every time he saw her now, he wondered. Would this be the time? Would this be it? Was _this_ it? And every time, he wrestled with wanting it to be. 

She regarded him now with something deep and hidden in her eyes for later. In his 30th year on Christmas Eve. He was in his 30s and she—

She leaned up and pressed her mouth to his, and it was that thing. It was their thing. 

A thing he could only ever articulate in hockey comparisons, which he refused to do out loud, because how embarrassing. But what would he do with the right words if he had them? Speak them? To whom? The less spoken about this, the better.

He touched her face with both hands, exhaled into the kiss, and shivered when she slipped her arms around his waist inside his coat. She scooted closer to the edge of the counter and tightened her knees around his hips. 

It was seven in the morning, and he wondered if he could touch her skin before—

The floor creaked above them and the bathroom door shut. That would be Dad. 

“God,” Taylor said against his lips. Her posture sank, her head tipping forward against his collarbone.

“All right?” Sid asked, not ready to draw back yet. 

Taylor rocked her head in a nod. “Yeah.” But then she shook it, no. She didn’t say anything, though, just straightened and gave him that same, searching look again. “It’s good to see you,” she said and let her knees drop.

Right on time, their mother started down the stairs, her pace a little slower than when they were kids, but recognizable. 

Sid wiped his mouth and turned, shrugging out of his coat just as she came in, her slippers shuffling on the linoleum. “Sidney—you made it!”

“Hi, Mom.” He kissed her cheek, folded her into a careful hug, and looked over her shoulder to see their dad following. 

“Where’s breakfast?” he asked, a joke in the tilt of his mouth, but Sid would swear the temperature dropped behind him where Taylor jumped down from the counter.

“You guys got up too early,” Sid said, managing a light tone.

“We heard you down here, but your mother made me wait until seven—what have you been doing this whole time?”

Sid hadn’t yet trained himself not to tense up at questions like that.

“I made coffee, Dad,” Taylor said. “Let me get you some.” 

Did they recognize the stiffness in her voice or in his posture? He supposed if they hadn’t yet, they were ignoring it, or they never would. Taylor hated Dad’s goading sense of humor, but that didn’t stop him. Very little did. If anything, it drove him on. Sid came by that part of himself honestly, at least.

Without another word, he ducked down to root through the cupboards for a frying pan. Taylor poured coffee for everyone, close enough to him that as she lined up the mugs, she pressed the side of her knee, warm and solid, against his shoulder.

*

The neighborhood Christmas Eve party was a tradition as old as Sid could remember, and it was probably lots older than that. Most years he managed to get out of going. Recently, he and Taylor both skipped, but this year, she’d declared she was attending and bringing an hors d’oeuvre. Not to be left behind, Sid hunched into his pockets and tagged along, bumping shoulders with her as they walked down the street to the festively lit house with animatronic reindeer in the front yard.

“Everything all right?” he asked for what felt like the tenth time since he’d been home. 

She nodded tightly, shifted her grip on the covered plate of bruschetta she’d tossed together, and tugged down the hem of her party dress. Her legs had to be freezing. Their parents followed behind, feet scraping over gravel, voices distant in the nighttime. The air was thick with the kind of snow that fell like mist, hazy around the streetlights.

Inside, _Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree_ played too loudly, and the host, already sloppy, gave both Taylor and Mom wet kisses in greeting. Taylor laid one on him in return, and everyone laughed, and Sid wasn’t sure if any time had passed at all, or if every neighborhood Christmas party took place in 1997. This could have been 1987 or 1957, though he was not as equipped to judge that. The crisp, shiny, updated kitchens of his teammates’ houses hadn’t made it to this corner of Cole Harbor.

But when Taylor leaned in a doorway, right under the mistletoe, the truth slapped him back to reality. Everything was different—everything was _more_. Time passing didn’t make it easier.

He brushed past her on the way to the food table, and she snatched his wrist into a tight grip. “What?” he asked.

With a glance up at the mistletoe, she dared him to do it, right there in front of everyone. And, moving before things got weird, Sid leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to her temple. “Watch it,” he said to the baby hairs by her ear.

“Meet me downstairs in ten,” she answered. 

Which was a ridiculous thing to ask of him, and he’d decided he wouldn’t do it through the ensuing nine minutes. But in that tenth one, he couldn’t face a room full of people he had no real interest talking to if she wasn’t with him, so after a trip to the bathroom, he ducked down to the basement.

It was a rec room with a ping pong table, pinball machine, and the air hockey game he used to play when he came to these parties in middle school. Taylor stood at the pinball machine with her plastic cup of white wine but didn’t play, staring through it like she’d been doing to all of them all day. A couple neighborhood kids played a rowdy game of ping pong, and Sid shut himself in the bathroom/laundry area before anybody saw him, pulse kicking and burning in his face. He braced both hands on the utility sink, ready to call it a night, when Taylor slipped in behind him. 

The door didn’t even lock.

After downing the last few swallows of wine all in one go, she tossed her cup in the garbage and boosted herself onto the dryer with a grunt. 

“Why are we here?” Sid asked, keeping his voice low. “We could’ve just stayed home.”

“Not enough wine at home—just Dad’s lousy beer,” she answered and hooked his leg with her boot. Her dress clung to her hips and thighs, and when she didn’t wear tights or leggings, Sid thought she was being impractical, but Sid was sometimes still an idiot about this. She drew him back between her legs and, fucking hell, she had nothing on under that dress. He trailed his hand up between her thighs, and he could hear the fucking ping pong game going on outside. He pressed two fingers into her anyway. 

She exhaled a soft sound and tilted her hips up, drawing him in deeper. 

“Shit,” he grunted, looking down at his hand disappearing under her dress. 

“Yeah,” she answered, pressing quick kisses along his jaw.

“I can’t get you off like this.”

“No, but don’t go yet.”

“I’m not.” He crooked his fingers and fucked in and out, just to feel her grip him and sigh.

Hot and wet, she could probably draw him all the way into her, and like she could read his mind, she murmured, “Wish we could right here.”

“You’re crazy,” he said on a short laugh. With her dress hiked up, it pulled across the curve of her belly, and it was definitely fucked up how much he liked her shape. Liked that it reminded him they were related. She was solid and strong as bricks, just like him, with that layer of padding, just like him. 

She was getting wetter, her breath coming quicker, and they had to stop. “Let’s go home,” he mumbled to her throat, biting gently. 

“No, we’re going to midnight mass.” 

“Fuck, that’s right.”

“You have to stop, or I won’t let you stop.”

That stopped him.

*

When Taylor went to confession that night, Sid put his head down and prayed in his pew, though for what, he wasn’t exactly sure. He sat through mass with one of the guiltiest boners of his life. But only one.

*

She tried it in Vegas first, after the award ceremony. After the after-party. 

No matter how careful an eye he kept on her, she managed to get buzzed. But when Calder nominees were being served, how was he supposed to keep his sister sober? She didn’t get sloppy. Taylor had always been way too conscious of her image and her responsibility as Crosby-sibling to ever get sloppy at an NHL function. She understood at fourteen. She understood at eighteen.

She understood lots of things, he should have realized. 

Like how to catch his eye across a room and communicate she was done being his date for the night. And how to take his hand in the elevator so that every hair on his arm stood up. How to close the door to his room with her back to it and keep hold of his sleeve so he turned to see her there like that. So close he could taste the expensive wine on her breath and the sweet-smelling stuff she’d put in her hair.

They didn’t do anything that night, but he’d stood there in the short hallway of his hotel room with his sister backed against the door long enough that he’d _thought about it_. Everything shifted after that. He knew why she’d gotten buzzed. He knew what she wanted. What he was slipping toward. He shouldn’t have known with such certainty, but he did.

In his bed later, _that_ was the guiltiest boner of his life.

*

Christmas morning dawned silent in the Crosby house for the first time Sid could remember—without Taylor jumping into his bed to tickle him awake for present-opening. 

The last few years had been different, obviously. Less tickling. 

More, his mouth on her under the blankets, the day so far from starting not a hint of daylight brightened the curtains. Her breath harsh, voice stuck in her chest, even when she shivered and gasped through more than one orgasm, fingers too tight in his hair. Dozing after with pajamas back on, skin barely touching.

This year, their parents got them up an hour late. Sid would never push her, ever, so they opened presents without talking about her silence. 

One of the few who still refused to do his Christmas shopping online, Sid bought almost everything for his family at the mall, gradually accumulating throughout the year his collection of things he knew they liked. A favorite hand cream and new slippers for his mom, the latest fishing gear for Dad, the softest sweaters he could find for Taylor. And a subscription to a new home security system for the house because you could never be too careful. That one, he called for.

From his parents, he received books of military history and socks—the one piece of clothing he never bothered buying for himself. He appreciated socks as a gift so much more now than he did growing up. Taylor got him the latest gross-out comedy because she loved to watch them with him and laugh so hard she snorted root beer out her nose. It didn’t take much for her.

Or, it hadn’t.

She smiled and thanked him for his gifts and grinned when he opened his own, but it was a little forced and empty, like her head was somewhere else. 

Sid should have known where.

*

“Have you been working with Sully to pull yourself out of this slump?”

Sid swallowed his bite of mashed potatoes and took a sip of water before answering his dad’s question. “Little bit, yeah.”

“What’s be been telling you?”

“Shoot the puck more,” he answered, letting a little smirk into his voice. He shot a glance at Taylor, but she stared down at her plate, one side of her lower lip pinched between her teeth, no humor in her expression.

“Well, that advice obviously isn’t getting through.”

Sid took a slow breath, repeating to himself what had taken him years to understand. This was how his father communicated. Criticism and coaxing and _finally_ acknowledgment. Sid had three Stanley Cups, and that still hadn’t changed how they talked to each other. He could be retired and coaching, and Dad would say _I care about you_ by calling out his decision to bench somebody.

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Sid said and gave Dad his full attention. No one would ever accuse Sidney Crosby of avoiding hockey talk.

“Not really,” was his dad’s answer. “You find a lane, you make the pass, or you put it in. I know you know how it’s done.”

“Sure, but it’s a little tougher with the new guys. Without Cully and Bones and Kuni and Dales, there’s more pressure on my line—and Geno’s. It’s an adjustment.” It wasn’t an excuse; it was a reason. 

Dad had never been much for either one. He scoffed and shook his head. “Sounds like you and I should take a trip to the rink while you’re here and—”

Silverware clanged next to him when Taylor stood so abruptly the whole table shook. She tossed her napkin down and left without a word or a backward glance, her footsteps quiet on the stairs but her bedroom door slamming.

Confused, Sid glanced between his parents, but now it was his father staring straight ahead at nothing. 

Sid started to rise from his seat, but his mother stopped him. “I wouldn’t,” she said sharply.

“What?”

“If she wanted to talk, she’d be here.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked, a strange relief flooding in that maybe Taylor’s odd mood this break had nothing to do with him. With them.

“Nothing she’d want me to share at the dinner table,” she answered.

Crosbys didn’t fight, not with any volume and not in front of each other, so Sid shut his mouth. Or rather, he filled it with food and later a plan to go to the rink and take shots because it really was the best therapy for him and Dad. If it wouldn’t end in disaster, he’d have invited Taylor along.

Which was when he understood what was going on.

*

“Wanna watch the movie you got me?” Sid asked when she finally came down from her room.

Taylor jumped at his voice, backing out from inside the fridge door with her unfinished Christmas dinner covered in cling wrap. 

Sid held up the plastic case—some buddy cop thing with a Walberg in it—but Taylor shook her head. “Not really.”

“What should we do, then?”

She shrugged and dug a bite of turkey out from under the wrapping.

“We could go for a drive,” he suggested, itching to get out of the house. He spent only a few nights here a year, and for so long home was all he wanted, but right then, it was stifling.

“Booze run?” she replied, her eyebrows lifting.

Sid made a face. “Nothing’ll be open.”

“Some of the bars will be.”

“Nothing good will be open.”

“I don’t need good.”

“What do you need?” he asked quietly.

“To get out of here for five fucking minutes.” She put the plate back and shut the fridge door with a little too much force, hard enough the condiment bottles rattled inside.

She was dressed in sweats for bed, but she went for her coat on the hook and slid her feet into her boots by the door. “Let’s go.”

They drove to a divey place on the outskirts of Dartmouth, the fifteen minutes it took to get there spent in heavy silence. Once Sid parked the car, he shook his head.

“Look, I don’t think it’s smart for you and me to go in there at ten on Christmas night.”

Arm braced against the window, Taylor nodded, her eyes gone distant again. “I know.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll go get something.”

“I also don’t think you should go in there alone.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You’ve been living in the States too long, Squid.”

Which was probably true. He watched her shuffle into the bar, bulky in her coat, sweats, and boots, and had no idea how to start the conversation they needed to have. Hopefully whatever she bought in there would help.

She came back with a bottle of red wine and no cups, but when she shut herself back inside the warmth of Sid’s rental car, he saw it was a twist-off. Looking more pleased than she had all day, she unscrewed the cap right there. 

“Where to now?” he asked, watching her take a long swallow.

“The water,” she answered, licking her lips. 

“It’s December.”

“I know that. There’ll be Christmas lights. I just want to sit for a little bit.” She offered him the bottle. “Want some?”

With her eyes on him, Sid took a quick drink, the wine sweet and sharp on his tongue. Then he handed it back, put the car in gear, and headed toward the water.

And apparently all she needed was a little distance from the house and a swallow of liquid courage because she started the conversation for him. “I hate how he talks to you—like you’ve got anything to prove to him.”

Sid drove.

“It’s fucking Christmas, and the only thing he cares about is your scoring slump. Obviously, what you need are a few tips from Troy Crosby to fix your game, Sidney.” She barked an unhappy laugh, then, spotting the lights of the waterfront park, gestured vaguely for Sid to go that way.

While he wasn’t looking at her, he said, “It’s comfortable for him to rag on me. It’s how he feels like he’s still my dad.”

“It’s bullshit.” She took another swallow, then screwed the cap back on the bottle. From the corner of his eye, he saw her clasp the bottle between her thighs and forced himself to quit white-knuckling the wheel. 

“I bet if I quit the team, he wouldn’t even notice,” she said, quieter. “Fuck, _my_ team wouldn’t even notice.”

Sid parked the car overlooking the water. Across the harbor, Halifax spread brightly lit before them. The breeze on the water turned it choppy and unappealing. Freezing. Digesting what she’d just told him, he reached over and took the bottle of wine from between her legs, unscrewed the cap, and drank. 

Taylor hadn’t played a single game this season. Her numbers were bad. She was a senior, and unless she took a fifth year, this was probably the end of the line. Their dad hadn’t said a word to her about it, and Sid would bet money, even though she hated it, all she wanted was for him try.

The shitty thing was, slowly twisting the cap back on, Sid had nothing to say, either. The last thing in the world he wanted was to upset her, but his silence probably hurt worse than Dad’s.

“I’m not even worth criticizing,” she said, turning away from him to stare out the passenger window. “I’ve tried to be a part of this thing for so long, to be close to you and Dad, and now you can’t even talk to me about it. How fucking awful is that?”

He _needed_ to say something, but none of the words he might use were right. _It’s okay_? _Lots of people are bad at hockey—that doesn’t mean they should stop playing_? 

“I don’t think you should quit the team,” he finally, _finally_ managed.

“Why?” She turned in her seat to regard him, the side of her face lit in red and green from the park lights.

“Because—because it’s always better to see something through. To do your best. You’ll regret it if you quit before the end.”

Silence stretched between them until Taylor sucked in a deep breath and reached across for the wine. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was taking a drive with Coach Crosby.”

The tension cracked at the bratty note in her voice, and Sid scoffed. “What?”

“This isn’t the Crosby Hockey School or Li’l Croz’s Peewee League or whatever the fuck your next get-everyone-to-love-the-game crusade is going to be. I need to talk to someone who’ll give me a straight answer about this, and you’re all I’ve got.”

“I’m giving you a straight answer. Don’t quit.”

“That’s not good enough.” She looked him in the eye, and hers were wet, and she was right. “I need a reason, Sidney. Why should I do this thing that I’m not sure I love anymore? Why am I still the cute little sister who thinks she can play hockey like her big brother? You know everybody thinks I only made the team because of you.”

“They don’t think that.” It was out of his mouth too fast to sound anything but desperate. “Everyone on your team adores you. And you love them, too I’ve seen it.” That part was true, at least.

She gave him a small, painful smile. “They think I’m funny and cute. Not good. I’ve heard them. And I’m not—I’m not good.” 

They were assholes, then. And so was Sid, because he couldn’t deny it. 

“Will you want to stop messing around if I quit?” 

Sid blinked his confusion. “What do you mean?”

Her gaze shifted sideways. “If I’m not playing anymore, will you still want—will you stop wanting—”

He shuddered, even with the heat blasting. “Jesus, Taylor.” It happened anytime they tried to talk aloud about this. Them. His guts clenched up and his heart wanted to climb out between his ribs. He wanted to get _away_ from her and this and them. 

Which should have told him everything he needed to know.

It seemed to for Taylor. “Oh my god,” she said quietly. She shot him a quick look. “Oh my _god_.”

“Taylor—”

“Take me home.” Her voice was brittle. “Right now.”

Too twisted up to say anything right, Sid drove her home. 

*

She tried again and succeeded that same summer after Vegas, right before she went away to Northeastern. 

The few weeks he got with her in the offseason were so precious, looking back, they all seemed to glow in his memory. He loved her so much. 

She stayed with him at his house on the lake a lot—mostly, she said, because she needed a break from Mom fretting over her moving to Boston. She’d already lived away from home at Shattuck. She didn’t see what the big deal was, but Sid happened to know their mother considered Minnesota safe because he had already been there. Minnesota was annexed Canada. Boston had Bruins fans in it.

They grilled and sat on his deck, talking about teachers they’d both had until the mosquitos forced them in. He let her have a glass of wine with dinner, and tossing their dishes in the dishwasher after, he thought her mouth looked red as the wine they’d drunk.

She hopped up on the counter while he finished cleaning up, and when he’d shut the dishwasher, her knees were so close, all he could do was stare at them. Finally, she reached for his hand and helped him to touch her. He clasped her knee and rubbed his thumb in a circle against the inside of her leg. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t even breathe. She pulled his hand higher along her thigh to the hem of her shorts where she didn’t shave, the hair soft and gold, barely visible. But he remembered the feel of it, and that was when she put her hand on his face and kissed him.

*

Taylor understood him, understood the life he’d made, better than anyone. Only she knew him. Only she felt safe, even when what they did was the definition of risk. It was the feeling of a trusted linemate, but so much better. Permanent. He would never have that with anyone else, ever. By definition.

That he’d never offered her the same understanding was the kind of irony that could strangle a person in his bed thinking too long on it. Any guilt he’d felt to this point was dwarfed by how completely he’d bungled this. He’d asked everything of her. She’d made every first move, dictated the pace and terms of every step, so that he felt comfortable and safe. The two of them, together in this life they’d chosen. Them against the world. And all along, she was trapped in her choices—by his life, _his_ expectations. 

He wanted to leave right then. Go back to Pittsburgh and fuck off until they could both think clearly again. 

Had she known how selfish he was all along, or had she been as blind as him? Had _he_ blinded her?

The thought almost choked him.

He should have seen all this sooner, but breathing slow and deep with his diaphragm, he was just as sure that if he called it quits, didn’t touch her again, and never brought any of it up, he’d have proven her right and confirmed the worst. She could only have him if she stuck with a life she no longer wanted.

It was the most ludicrous and wholly justified thing she could think of him.

When he couldn’t stand being alone with himself a second longer, and the house had been silent for at least an hour, he threw off the blankets and climbed out of bed. The back of his neck prickled along with most of the rest of him. Every creak of the house grabbed at his heart so that he crossed the hall to her room with his eyes closed, as if he were still seven and afraid of the dark, living in a time before she existed.

Inside her room, he found her turned away from him, but when he shut them both in, she shifted over onto her back. Eyes adjusted to the dark, he could just see her blink at him.

“Sidney?”

“Yeah, can I—” He started toward the bed but hesitated. Then she lifted the edge of her blankets. 

“Of course.” 

He’d never been in her bed before. She was always the one to come to him. Always. Everything smelled like her, down to the faint tang of sweat. She’d always been a warm sleeper, and there were nights he’d awoken to her overheated and restless beside him, hair stuck to her neck, t-shirt damp between her breasts.

When she’d turned toward him with her palm open on the bed, he kept his eyes there.

“I’m sorry about earlier. I got that all wrong. I had no idea.”

“I should have told you sooner,” she said. Her voice was thick, but not with sleep. “I was scared to.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. So I want to tell you something,” he said.

“All right,” she answered.

“My whole life,” he began and stalled. He touched her hand carefully, his middle two fingers in the center of her palm. “My whole life, I’ve only ever been sure I loved you. You could quit hockey tomorrow, and that wouldn’t change. That’s never going to change.”

He stopped, startled by how easy that was. The truth of it seemed utterly uncontroversial. Even innocent.

“But…” Taylor hooked his fingers with her own. “Hockey _is_ your whole life. If I quit, that’s going to change everything.”

“It would change some things,” he agreed. “But—you heard the thing I just told you, right?” He finally looked up at her.

She nodded, hair rustling quietly against her pillow. “I just don’t know if I believe it.”

He’d earned that. Every bit of it. “If quitting hockey means you don’t want to…with me,” he said. “If it changes what you want, or if there’s _any_ reason you don’t want to, then that’s fine.”

“Fine?”

“Well—”

“Would you still love me, even if we didn’t?” She looked at his mouth as she spoke. “If we never fucked, and I never played hockey again. Would you still?” 

He still wanted her to make this choice, even now. Decide for him if they would stop. It was on his tongue to ask her. It was bullshit.

“I would still,” he said. This part wasn’t so innocent or uncontroversial. He would love her selfishly—monstrously—for as long as he lived.

“It used to twist me up so bad,” she said, “all through high school. Missing you. Not talking. Waiting for you to come home. If I quit hockey, I feel like I’d leave behind what makes us you and me. I don’t even know who I’ll be if I’m not missing you and trying to…”

Shifting a little closer, he pressed his brow to hers. She closed her eyes tight and didn’t finish her thought, so he tried for her. “You don’t have to be anything. And nobody’s getting left behind,” he said. It was a horribly embarrassing older-brother thing to say, but he’d always been that. Even here, as he tipped his chin forward and kissed her. It was that thing. It was their thing.

She breathed out a messy laugh. “You’re so fucking corny,” she murmured, scooting closer and rubbing one knee against his until he let her in. She ground restlessly against him, touching his face with one hand and gently kissing both his cheeks.

“You can’t stay here tonight,” she told him.

“I know.”

Still, she wriggled closer, wedging her shoulder against his and angling herself until the only thing to do was shift her underneath him. He braced above her and shivered at the scrape of her nails along his sides. 

“You so owe me one,” she said into his ear.

He really did. “How do you want it?”

Her hands slid to his boxers and pushed them down his hips. “Like this. But this bed’s noisy, so you gotta go slow.”

Inside the cocoon of blankets, he flushed so hot he was dizzy. “Do you keep anything here?” he asked.

“Yeah, under the bed.”

He huffed. “Classy.”

“Better than across the room in my desk.” She exhaled sharply when he lowered onto her to reach under the bed, then hooked her legs around his and rolled her hips up into him so his dick rubbed against her right where she liked.

“Shit,” he grunted, hand closing over a paper bag. It crinkled noisily. “This it?”

“Yeah. Just grab one—they’re loose.”

He snagged a condom and left the bag, pressing back up off her and ripping it open with his teeth. With another quiet curse, he rolled it on while she peeled off her underwear. Kicking his boxers the rest of the way down, he discovered that, yes, the bed did creak. 

“You should come stay with me over your spring break,” he said, missing his giant bed and the privacy of his own house. 

“Yeah, maybe,” she answered and guided him back between her legs. With a hand on him and her heel digging into his lower back, she pulled him into her. Her breath hitched, and her hips worked in a shallow rhythm until he was held deep inside. His own breath felt deafening in the close, dark space—too quick and heavy already—especially when she pulled the blankets up almost completely over their heads.

“Kiss me like that again,” she murmured. 

He did, and kneed in a little closer, hoisting her hips up to deepen the angle. He fucked in slow, just like she asked, and grimaced at the groan of the bedframe. 

“You need a new bed,” he grumbled.

“We need to not fuck here.”

That was obviously the better solution.

“Don’t stop,” she said quickly, like she thought he might.

He didn’t. Like dialing in his shot, he worked out just how hard he could push into her without making the bed creak and how slowly he needed to draw out. It was excruciatingly slow. But it lit him up from his scalp to the arches of his feet, until he couldn’t imagine speeding up. If he sped up, he would probably have a heart attack. 

Taylor breathed with him and clung to him, the muscles in her arms trembling against his. 

“You might need to help me,” he said. “Don’t know how long I can—”

She interrupted him with a kiss, her hand slipping down between their bodies. First, she felt out the shape of him in her, then pressed behind his balls, just hard enough for him to jolt and groan into her mouth. “That’s not gonna help any,” he managed, and he could feel her smiling.

“I know.” Her hand shifted to her clit, and the catch in her breath when she started to touch herself was still a rush like no other. Now he wanted to speed up, but he clamped down on the urge and kept the push and drag of their rhythm so slow that the bed hardly moved. 

“God, fuck—” she cursed in a whisper, fingers a quick counterpoint to their slow fucking. 

She hooked him by the back of the neck in the crook of her elbow and held him so close he couldn’t see a thing, and all he could hear was his breath against her throat. He bit and sucked and licked and screwed her so slow his hair almost hurt. His skin barely held him together.

“Sidney,” she said on an uneven exhale. Then she trailed her fingers down his spine, and he came apart. 

“Ohfuck,” he gasped, drove in—thumped the headboard once against the wall—and stilled, emptying himself into her, into the condom.

She made a desperate sound, and it got him moving again, for her. “Yeah—yes.” Her hand clenched against his back, her body clenched tight beneath him, and her orgasm spread outward from her center until she clenched and shook all over. And hardly made a sound.

They held each other there, after, in a draw-out moment of release—Sid, at least, too overwhelmed to move or speak. Finally, Taylor’s leg slipped down alongside his, and she flopped one arm across her eyes. Sid reluctantly extracted himself from her and sat back on his heels, watching her for just a moment. Her t-shirt was rucked up just beneath her breasts, and he wished he’d taken more time to taste her there. On an inhale, he removed the condom, tied it off, and threw it out wrapped in a bunch of balled-up tissues.

“Can you stay for just another minute?” Taylor whispered, looking at him now from beneath her arm. She held out his boxers to him as he crossed back toward her. When he got in bed, she’d already pulled her underwear on. “Just for a minute,” she said again, curling up next to him. He breathed in the smell of her hair and drifted.

“Sorry,” she eventually said, and it woke him right out of his doze.

“What are you sorry for?”

“Sorry I dumped all that and, like, made it about you.” She said this to his chest, so he leaned back to look at her.

“I’m glad you told me. And, I mean, it is about me.”

“Not everything has to be, though, Squid,” she said, that note in her voice that told him she was embarrassed and irritated about it. “It shouldn’t be. You’ve got so much going on already, I don’t want—I just want—” She cut herself off, but Sid knew where she was headed. _So much is always, already about you_. She wanted something for herself. She wanted out of his orbit, at least for a while.

Sid would like out of his orbit sometimes, too, frankly.

“What do you want to do instead of hockey?” he asked, the question just now dawning on him. Taylor had an infinite list of possibilities open to her. Well, one less than infinite, he supposed. She was unlikely to pick coaching hockey.

Taylor, the park ranger. Taylor, the philosopher. Taylor, the botanist. He was so vicariously optimistic for her, he couldn’t help smiling. 

She tried to smooth down her sex-hair and smiled back at him, excitement finally breaking through for the first time since he’d been home. “I don’t know. But I wanna travel first, I think. Go to Paris and Edinburgh and Vienna. Budapest. Get out of Canada.” She spent most of the year in Minnesota, but he took her point. “Then, who knows? I think I could like sports medicine.”

That fit. She was a jock first and always, just like him. “UPMC has a lot going on,” he offered. “It’s a teaching hospital, obviously. They’ve got internships and facilities all over.”

She hesitated, which was when Sid realized he’d asked her to move to Pittsburgh. 

The offer sat there between them. Strange and wrong for a reason he couldn’t put words to. The shape and size were right there, but he’d spent so long _not_ thinking about it, now he couldn’t. 

“Something to think about,” he said awkwardly and started to get up. They were both going to be useless tomorrow with all the sleep they weren’t getting.

She stopped him with a hand on his side. But when he looked down to see her staring up at him, all she said was, “I have to pee.” Which couldn’t be what she intended to say. They climbed out of bed together, and when Sid reached for the doorknob, she put her hand over his and stopped him again. Behind him, she rested her head against his shoulder blade and kissed his skin. Her nose was just the tiniest bit cold, and he shivered.

When he finally opened the door, they went in opposite directions down the hall. 

Climbing into his own bed, the words he’d been looking for came to him like forgotten lyrics. He already knew them:

Did he get to make plans? Did he get to hold onto her when she as good as told him she wanted something different?

Her feet were so silent on the carpet, he never even heard her until she was right in front of him. Kneeling beside the bed, she kissed his cheek. “I passed Mom on the way out of the bathroom,” she whispered.

She knelt so close to him, it was easy to snag his fingers in her hair. “What happened?” he murmured. She covered his hand with her own. 

“She said she heard a thump from my room. I told her I had a dream and startled myself awake.” Sid searched her face, and her smile was just this side of wild. “I smell like you right now, but I don’t think she noticed.” She kissed him again. “See you in the morning.”

She was afraid wanting her own life meant leaving him. He could fix that. Okay, he was pretty sure he could fix that. He watched her slip out of his room and imagined the fingerprints he’d left on her hips.

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being really close to your prompt! Something I rarely manage! [(Such rich source material, though, lol.)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZnqBL6iYjA) It was more difficult than I thought it'd be writing this from Sid's POV and managing his guilt/bad/wrong feelings without them crossing into melodrama. I hope I succeeded there. *sweats*


End file.
